CACI Defense Contracts Hazy on Civilian Authority

Language Reserves Direction for Military

By Ellen McCarthy

Contracts released by the Defense Department raise new questions about
whether civilian employees of CACI International Inc. supervised the
interrogation of some prison detainees in Iraq.

The Pentagon provided
copies of the Arlington company's government contracts to the Center for Public
Integrity, which sought them under the Freedom of Information Act. The center,
based in the District, made the documents public yesterday.

The $19.9
million contract for CACI to provide interrogators, awarded last August, calls
for the civilian workers to "provide oversight and other directed intelligence
support to [military] screening and interrogation operations, with special
emphasis on High-Value detainees."

But the contract for interrogation
services also says that CACI employees are to be "directed by military
authority" and that "the contractor is responsible for providing supervision of
all contractor personnel."

The role played by CACI's civilian
interrogators has been debated since one of them, Steven A. Stefanowicz, was
implicated in an internal Army report on abuses at Abu Ghraib prison outside
Baghdad. The report said Stefanowicz encouraged soldiers to set conditions for
interrogations and "clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse."
Stefanowicz's lawyer has said his client did nothing wrong.

Controversy
also arose over the government's use of a contract intended to provide
information technology services to hire the civilian interrogators.

Using
an umbrella contract managed by the Interior Department, the government awarded
CACI 11 task orders for duties in Iraq including inventory management and
intelligence analysis.

Critics said the newly released CACI contracts add
to questions about the government's use of private contractors to carry out
sensitive wartime operations.

"This once again just shows how far we've
pushed it," said Peter W. Singer, a fellow with the Brookings Institution.
"When you see contracts written this way, they are ignoring a fundamental fact.
. . . You are hiring someone to do a military job even through they are not
in the military."

Harry Thornsvard, a senior vice president at CACI, said
that even though the contract language is not clear, the company's employees had
no authority over soldiers.

"Civilian contractors do not give orders to
military personnel. CACI at all times has been under the operational control
and direction of the United States military," Thornsvard said. "This has been
confirmed by the sworn testimony of the Army generals responsible for operations
in Iraq and the secretary of the Department of Defense."

CACI also was
awarded a $21.8 million contract to provide human intelligence support and a
$3.2 million contract to screen Iraqis for access to U.S. bases. CACI also was
retained to analyze Iraq's local media for clues to potential security threats.

Several of the contracts call for CACI employees to "function as
resident experts."

Some contracting experts said such language creates
confusion about how civilian contractors interact with enlisted soldiers and
officers.

"This is telling us that the buck stops at the contractors.
. . . There may be a chain of command, but the people who are the experts,
who know the rules, are outside the government," said Daniel J. Guttman, a
fellow at the Center for Study of the American Government at Johns Hopkins
University.